Saturday, March 29, 2008

With the talk of a Cannibal Holocaust remake, we here at the jadedviewer decided to throw a quick list together of the Top 5 Cannibal movies of all time. For the uninitiated, the cannibal genre was big sub genre of exploitation films in the 70s.

White people go to the jungle to exploit the natives for their own selfish means (either dollars or fame). Cannibals run amok and start to eat the reporters.

Gore, REAL animal mutitaltion, flesh eating and many disembowelments later, you begin to realize you shouldn't book your next vacation in South America.

Spearheaded (pun intended) by directors like Ruggero Deodato, Umberto Lenzi and Joe D'Amato, the late 70s and early 80s were abuzz with these grindhouse flicks.

Cannibal films are a staple of the underground flicks every horror fan needed to see.

So if you're a newbie and what to expand your exploitation film knowledge see all the movies listed below.

Ever get to a point in your movie viewing life where you think to yourself "I've seen it all!" Ever watch a movie and think to yourself "Whoever saw this movie, has seen them all and turned the leftovers into this film."

Consistency is not something we are always accustomed to. Sometimes it is welcome and sometimes it really is not. Ok, so maybe I'm being vague, but here it comes. Bad acting, bad editing, bad sound cues that are supposed to scare you, horrible visual effects, lighting that would only work if everyone was wearing glow in the dark paint, and terrible writing make this one consistent film.

I really hope I didn't blow it all for you with that barrage, but it needed to be said. Of all the films from the After Dark Horrorfest 8 Films to Die For banner, this may be the one that is the most devoid of quality. How do I even begin to destroy the film? Read more.

My review of Mulberry Street posted here originally is also up on UGO.com.

Monday, March 24, 2008

When the climax of your opening scene is ocular trauma, you’ve pretty much hooked me, no questions asked. And that’s how Borderland starts and continues until its chaotic, bloody end and in doing so makes it the best movie of the After Dark Horrorfest.The story is about three high school grads Ed (Jake Muxworthy) our reluctant hero, Phil (Rider Strong “Cabin Fever”) our oversexed third wheel and Henry (Brian Presley) the cocky a**hole. They decide to head to Mexico to sow their oats before they all go off to college. Road trip anyone?

But what separates this movie becoming from a Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake or Hostel or Turistas, is the realism director Zev Berman injects into every aspect of the movie. The scenes of the border Mexican town are lively and chilling. The scenery is filled with docu-style visuals establishing 2 worlds, one where tourists visit and an underground where nobody dares speak of.

After Phil has an awkward situation with a Mexican “Kristen”, Ed meets a sexy, feisty bartender named Valeria. And that’s when the tourist world ends.Soon after, one of them gets kidnapped by a drug cartel. But this is not an ordinary smuggling ring. They are a black magic obsessed drug dealers who believe that human sacrifice enables them to become “invisible” from authorities.

The 2 other gringos ask the authorities for help but are shunned. Instead they meet Ulises an ex cop who tells them about the cult, their location and agrees to help them free their friend.

The real surprise that had me shaking my head was Sean Astin (Rudy, LOTR) in a mind bending, defining role. As Randall, the unlikely American who keeps an eye on the hostage, Astin plays an evil, maniac brute. It’s an outstanding performance by Astin who plays this character to perfection.

With these stellar performances, we get our fill of gore and more gore. Arm chopping, machete splitting and some gruesome beheadings. These all are from our brainwashed cult members and our step up to the plate hero, Ed. The final scenes are frenetically paced, with a few good moments of suspense and an all out bullet ridden shootout finale.

Borderland works as both a crime thriller and horror movie that it actually raises both parts to ingenious levels. It’s stark realism and because it’s loosely tied to a true story that occurred in 1989 give it that truthiness feel. Borderland does not skimp out on the splatter, diligently gives us pieces to a horrific crime and creates a movie that has no definitive genre, making it borderless. That’s why it’s the perfect and best of all the Horrofest movies.

The Extras:

The extras are on this DVD are as good as it gets. There are only 2 features but both are great. The first is Inside Zev’s Head: A Filmmaker’s Diary. At 20 minutes, it’s a great day to day behind the scenes documentary of the making of the movie. Here you get to hear Zev Berman on his inspiration for the film, the on the set problems and his philosophy on making movies.

The other feature is Rituales de Sangre – The True Story Behind the Cult Murder Investigation. This 28 minute feature focuses on an interview with George Gavito, a former Deputy Sheriff from the Brownsville, Texas police. He gives a first hand account of the true crime and the investigation that followed. It was totally mesmerizing experience as they showed real footage of the Mexican ranch where these human sacrifice murders occurred. The amateur video also shows the men who carried out these crimes and the aftermath by Mexican Federales to take down the cult leader of the group.

There is also audio commentary with the director Zev Berman, actor Brian Presley, Director of Photography Scott Kevan and Producer Lauren Moews.

Included in all of the After Dark Horrorfest DVDs are the Miss Horrorfest Contest webisodes. Think Surreal Life meets the Misfits. It’s a VH1 version of the Suicide Girls.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

“Laws are the only things that separate us from savagery. Because the beast is there inside all of us watching…waiting. When civilization is no longer there to protect us, when the beast is the only thing standing between us and death, we will absolutely fight tooth and nail to survive.”

I love when they mention the title of the movie in narrated dialogue. Doesn’t it always justify a cool sounding title? But in this case, it’s really just filler for a mediocre stab and jab movie.

A couple of questions popped into my head after watching Tooth and Nails.

Why does post apocalyptic Philadelphia look like modern day Philadelphia? So when the world runs out of gas we somehow turn into blood thirsty cannibals?

Can an abandoned hospital setting dictate every scene in your movie?

Well the answer to that last question is yes. And that’s the setting of Tooth and Nails.So if you were looking for a Mad Max America, you’re out of luck dude.

When the world runs out of gas in 2012, the world is consumed into anarchy; chaos and destruction the opening narration tell us. Smart survivors all head south but a few remain behind in good ole Philly (really? Philly?) We meet a group of survivors who are living in an abandoned hospital who are intent on rebuilding society.

Director Mark Young wasn’t being very subtle with his car/gas analogy. The characters are initially intriguing as they all have car like names. We meet Ford (Rider Strong, “Cabin Fever”) who is the loose cannon of the group, Viper (Michael Kelly) the muscle, Torino (Alexandra Barreto) the sexy vixen, Nova (Emily Young) the mute kid, Darwin (Robert Carradine) the professor and de facto leader and finally Dakota (Nicole DuPort) our Buffy-ish heroine.

They rescue a young girl Neon (Rachel Miner, “Penny Dreadful”) who has been attacked by “Rovers” who are packs of humans that have turned to cannibalism to survive in this hellish doomsday world. Neon tells them the Rovers have murdered her family. The Rovers wait until night to hunt their prey but only kill one at a time so their meat is fresh. Of course this begs the question, why don’t they just capture all of them and just lock em up. But then you wouldn’t get 90 minutes of stalk, hide, stab/shoot, run.

As the story progresses, our little 90210 group gets picked off one by one by the Rovers. Included in this group is Mr. Blonde himself Michael Madsen and Vinnie Jones in various extended cameos. The Rovers are of course dressed in your standard issue Mad Max, Road Warrior, Hills Have Eyes attire. They are also armed to the teeth with a variety of weapons that were picked up at the Medieval Times gift shop.

And there you have it. The gore factor kills are a plenty but sort of predictable and boring. Hatchet chopping, cleaver through the head, sliced throats, spear through the chest, arrow in the eye, acid dissolving face and battle axe through the head (not necessarily in that order).

There are some added sex scenes that seem very out of place (but alas because it is a horror movie they do have to follow some “Scream” rules). As the group fights for survival, an obvious twist is inserted that can only be summed up by one word: Yawn.

We conclude with Dakota outsmarting the Waterworld rejects and in an out of character bizzaro finale she goes all Braveheart on the remaining Rovers.

Logic here is totally thrown out the window and this movie should have been as well. The movie never defines what it wanted to be. I watched a Discovery channel show about the possibility of the world running out of gas and it was never this dire. Are we to believe that when we can’t fill our SUV’s anymore, we will become all become Dahmers in waiting?

Tooth and Nail is so preposterous its only redeemable value is that it’s MST3K worthy. So if you’re looking for a post apocalyptic world filled with cannibal hunters, go rent the cult classics instead. You’ll be spared this tooth and nail torture.

The Extras:

Included in all of the After Dark Horrorfest DVDs are the Miss Horrorfest Contest webisodes. Think Surreal Life meets the Misfits. It’s a VH1 version of the Suicide Girls.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

That’s 80 minutes I’ll never get back. That would be my quote if it appeared on the DVD cover of Crazy Eights.

So instead of a review that thoroughly shreds this movie, let’s go with a revised TV show theme song.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful tripThat started at this abandoned house aboard this horror flickThe main character was a mighty professor, the priest was brave and sure,

Four badly written horror characters set sail that day for a 80 minute tour.

a 80 minute tour.

The movie started getting rough, each horror cutout stereotype started to die.If not for some dialogue about an angry, evil supernatural little girl who wanted revenge because of guilt?!?, the audience would be lost.

The audience would be lost.

The movie set ground on the shore of mediocrityWith Dina Meyer, Frank Whaley too, some other guy and his wife (ok not really his wife, that just needed to rhyme),Traci Lords, the Priest and Gabrielle Anwar, here on Crazy Eights Isle!

That was fun. Suffice it to say I didn’t like Crazy Eights. It’s mind boggling that this was part of the After Dark Horrorfest. These 8 movies are supposed to be shunned by the mainstream as having dark or disturbing subject matter. But Crazy Eights is like a horror TV movie of the week.

The plot-matic tells us 6 friends have gathered for a childhood friend’s funeral and discover a map to a wooden trunk. The contents are all things from their mysterious past which eventually leads them to an abandoned house (because abandoned house are freakin scary). There they see glimpses of a little girl who has long black hair and raggedy clothes (and no she didn’t climb out of a TV). The horror gods trap them in and they begin to search for a way out discovering clues to their mysterious childhood along the way. They all eventually get picked off one by one which is done mostly off screen (the most aggravating horror movie convention) Gore hounds, you do not need to see this muck of a movie.

The cast is the most recognizable of all the Horrorfest movies. Dina Meyer (Saw franchise), Frank Whaley (“Big Brain on Brett” from Pulp Fiction), Traci Lords (c’mon you know), Gabrielle Anwar (Body Snatchers), George Newbern and Dan DeLuca who also co-wrote the film. All are in acting class mode and regurgitate badly written dialogue and overact when they are in danger.

Director James Jones vision is atmospheric, using his prime location of an abandoned asylum to dictate the “scares” from an arm grabbing hand to a missing jaw. But this crappy snooze fest is just filled with emotional psycho babble dribble and a script that is so boring, it makes straight to DVD torture porn look like Citizen Kane.

Crazy Eights seemed to have a good premise and a creepy location to draw out a disturbing story. But just like the cast of Gilligan’s Island, it never gets off the island and you sit there wondering, where did my 80 minutes go?

The Extras:

Included in all of the After Dark Horrorfest DVDs are the Miss Horrorfest Contest webisodes. Think Surreal Life meets the Misfits. It’s a VH1 version of the Suicide Girls.

Monday, March 17, 2008

If George A. Romero made a zombie-verse and Matt Reeves made an alien monster world, director Jim Mickle has made a rat monster utopia in Mulberry Street. It’s by far the better of the 3 movies either director made this year.

With a guerilla, docu-style and the nitty gritty look of NYC’s Mulberry Street as his backdrop, Mickle takes us into an apocalyptic city nightmare come true. Because as every New Yorker knows, the 2 things we hate the most are tourists and rats.

Our main “Ben” (aka lead character from NOTLD) is Clutch, a former boxer who lives in an apartment on Mulberry Street (it’s the main street in NYC’s Little Italy). With his friend Coco, they eagerly await for Clutch’s daughter Casey to return home from Iraq. We also meet the other tenants in this dilapidated complex, Charlie and Frank who are a couple of old timers and Kay, a bartender and her son.It’s never explained what caused the “sickness” that is making every New Yorker slowly turn into rat creatures but that’s not important. What is important is that we see a depiction of real New Yorkers dealing with a supernatural threat and basically doing what we always do, survive. There is no nauseating shaky camera, no annoying hipster looking for their girlfriend and no film students trying to film something so they can post it on YouTube.

What we do have is seeing the pseudo-realistic media coverage of a threat and the response to it with some very chilling scenes of attacks from a mass of rat infected zombies.

I know what you’re saying. Really? Rat creatures?

It’s not as cheesy as it sounds. The infected don’t develop RAGE like super strength or quickness but become, well more psychopathic and ratty. And boy are these creatures hungry and bloodthirsty. The tenants have to pummel and kick and fight thru the city streets in order to survive. These are all fast paced and suspenseful scenes and are quite well done.

Mulberry Street uses the same genre conventions of a Living Dead or a 28 Days Later. And even though they may be assembly line tricks of the trade, they work.

And that’s the fun of Mulberry Street.

Jim Mickle also takes a page from Romero’s satire handbook by not so subtly commentating on the world, post 9/11. More specifically, the slow government response to a Severe Red Theat Level event (the President was in Bermuda!) is an obvious crack at the government’s reaction and response to Hurricane Katrina.

The only negatives are that the movie does look a little like a 99 cents store. The acting was very plausible though the dialogue was a little dry. The special effects seemed to be Sci-Fi channel-ish and the darkness blurred many scenes into utter static. But on a meager budget, Mickle used quick shots, music video style editing and a couple of good gory bloodbaths to get his point across.

Mulberry Street is the biggest gem in the After Dark Horrorfest catalog. So if you didn’t like the zombie or giant lobster monster movies you watched this year, maybe enter the cannibal-rat monster-verse, it’s a cheesy movie you probably might like.

As this was a DVD, I was able to watch the extras as well. Here's a recap.

The Extras:

The extras are pretty bland in comparison to the movie. There are storyboards, 2 deleted scenes which pretty much sums up that most of the cut is the finished product. Also included are director’s Jim Mickle’s early sketches of scenes and of the rat monsters (which would make great background wallpaper). There are makeup tests which are hilarious as you can see the evolution of what the rat creatures were to become. Also, there are behind the scenes of ratty munching and outtakes which are always funny as this is a horror film about rat infected humans.

Finally there are behind the scenes of the rats that are featured predominately in the movie. From the looks of it rats never follow their cues and are so demanding with their list of outrageous demands.

Included in all of the After Dark Horrorfest DVDs are the Miss Horrorfest Contest webisodes. Think Surreal Life meets the Misfits. It’s a VH1 version of the Suicide Girls.

On a rainy, drenched NYC day, jadedviewer.com marched to the ImaginAsian, NYC's only Asian American movie theatre. We were here to attend the city premiere of Funky Forest.

I expected to see a decent showing of art house buffs, cult movie elitists and Japanese anime fans. But alas, the rain drove them away and only 5 other people were in the theatre with me and Insano Steve.

But from what I saw, the 7 of us that actually went to see this bizzare masterpeice enjoyed the 2 and a half hour insanity that was displayed on screen.

When you can walk away from theatre on a dismal, rainy night, with my socks being soaked and be smiling, that's worth the price of admission.

So why did FF make me smile?

I actually have no idea.

As I said before, the movie is BEYOND description. In a nutshell, the movie is a compilation of shorts that are connected by a few regular characters. Like a remote control, the movie switches from different short/skit to another. In between are random intros of a comedy duo, babbling women and....

(Really, I can't really describe it. I mean I'm trying to filter what I saw into coherent words but it's pretty much like busting open a pinanta and trying to tell you what all the candy was.)

But let's keep trying.

These vignettes include the most bizarre and crazy scenes I've seen in a while. From a couple's musical number to a very interesting "sport", they are unbelievably insane and totally twisted. It's like a blender of dreams by insane asylum patients.

And thats' why its awesome.

If each short/vignette was a channel, you would get the following:

Channel 1: The Mole Brothers

(a comedic, variety duo)

Channel 2: Little Hataru

(a little girl's dream)

Channel 3: “The Unpopular with Women Brothers” /Guitar Brother

(3 brothers, 1 of them a white fat kid who speaks phonetic japanese, the other a demon obsessed dancer and the other is the Yakuza guy from Ichi The Killer who try to orchestrate a "singles picnic")

Channe 4: Notti and Takefumi(A couple who listen to records and both have Lynchian like dreams. Takefumi's dream is turned into dance numbers involving aliens and giant animated hentai. Notti's dream is the only reference to a forest in this flick and has it's own decibel system.)

Channel 5: The Babbling Hot Springs Vixens(Three "Salary-Women" share stories and babble......alot.)Channel 6: HOMEROOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(A teacher and his quirky kids that make up the homeroom. We see certain kids "teach" the class. Of course I'm trying to make the last 2 sentences coherent but it's making my head hurt.)

The movie progresses flipping between each channel and revealing more insanity.

My favorites were Homeroom and Guitar Brother. Check out the scene below. One of the most bizarre and the one that made milk come out of my nose.

There are couple of other scenes you can check out on YouTube but it wouldn't be the same without watching the flick as a whole.

OK I'm pretty much done.

Never have my 5 senses been overloaded with glee. Funky Forest is a mix of Miike's Happiness of the Katakuris, David Lynch's surreal imagery and Cronenberg's Existenz if it were on acid.

It's a happy, goofy and just outright addictive mega kooky flick.

With a 2 minute intermission between all the chaos, Funky Forest is without a doubt why I think Japanese cinema is more than their J-horror and Miike's resume of flicks.It's so good, I might check myself into Bellvue right now.It's not out on DVD yet but playing at the ImaginAsian with Ishi's other flick Taste of Tea.

If you get a chance, go check out this gem and you too will be getting the straitjacket treatment as well.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Ryuhei Kitamura first burst into the horror radar scene with his ultimate zombie/yakuza movie Versus. His popularity soared with Azumi and he finally got on the Hollywood scene by directing the last Godzilla film: Gojira: Final Wars.

Now, he's teamed up with Clive Barker to bring us Midnight Meat Train, a horror movie where a New York photographer hunts down a serial killer in the subways of NYC.

The trailer looks like a bad J-Horror movie but if 2 people can pull off a soon to be cult favorite it's Barker and Kitamura.

There's a reason why this true crime has been made into books and film. It's so intriguing, filled with drama and horrific, unthinkable moments that it's hard to imagine it ACTUALLY happened.Well, another movie has been made on this and it stars Ellen Page as Sylvia and Catherine Keener as Gertrude.